Teardrops and A Little Regret
by Rain Sky
Summary: Regret Message. Post-Battle. In this harbour, if you write your wish on a slip of parchment, put it in a bottle of glass, and let it be carried away by this ocean, your wish will be granted. OiSM-compliant. OiSM spoilers.


Disclaimer: I am not J. K. Rowling and I do not own Harry Potter. I am not Mothy and do not own the Evillious Chronicles. My portrayal of characters is reasonably consistent with the information given in the fifth book, but not afterwards. Spoilers for "Only in Sweet Memories".

A/N: Mothy (Akuno-P) is a Japanese doujin music composer. He specialises in story-songs. This story is a companion piece to my other fic "Only in Sweet Memories" and the premise is based off the story Mothy described in his beautiful song "Regret Message". This follows the timelines of OiSM, with Sirius being born in 1960 and Bellatrix in 1962 and having been close growing up. However, I found no suitable place in OiSM for this scene, so rather than shoehorning it in awkwardly, I just made it a separate piece.

_July 31, 1998_

Black hair billowed in the breeze by the harbour, mimicking the endless waves and enveloping the slim woman in stark contrast to both her complexion and her dress. Her long white fingers cupped an object she held tightly to her chest. Perhaps ten years earlier she was a great beauty; as it was now, she looked like a partially wilted flower. She waded into the cold seawater and shivered. The wind picked up and the brine stung her eyes, but they were already bloodshot and red. They wanted to water, but this woman was nearly drained of tears. Even as a teenage girl at the peak of her youth, she had been broken and consumed by hatred.

She turned back to look at two women waiting on the shore, armed with wands and knives, unfailingly vigilant. They had the same aristocratic features, the same pallor, the same blue eyes, the same regal demeanours; it was as if some factory had churned out three dolls with different hair colours and physical specs but decided to economise on the face. Neither the redhead nor the blonde looked vivacious either, but they looked less hollow and both gave their youngest sister encouraging looks.

The sun had already set, but there was still plenty of light remaining in the sky. In one quite movement, as the bells of the church by the sea began to ring in a new hour, the woman with the jet-black hair chucked the object in her hands as far as she could. It seemed to pass through a magically conjured will o' wisp before it landed in the ocean with a soft plop.

The three women stared at the ripples in silence before the little glass bottle reappeared, buoyed by the air inside. Their long sought-after peace was interrupted.

"It's the Black's!"

"Three hostiles, armed and dangerous!"

"Don't give them the chance to Disapparate!"

The blonde scoffed at being referred to as a 'hostile'. If she and her sisters had truly wanted to escape from the Ministry's Aurors or the Order of the Phoenix, they would have done already – there were no anti-Apparition wards. She eyed the pursuers with disdain. She and her sisters had arrived at the small harbour town half an hour ago; what took them so long? The idiots at the Ministry dove at them shooting Stunning spells from an array personal broomsticks, from old Nimbuses and Cleansweeps to Comets and a single Firebolt.

Bellatrix was visibly distraught that a private moment was intruded on, but it was Andromeda whose temper flared. "Cut it out, you tactless Mudblood monkeys!" She snapped, as she began hexing the flying pursuers. She successfully petrified four flyers but a teenage boy with brilliant green eyes on the only Firebolt shot a Stunning spell at her. Narcissa deflected it at last-second with a powerful Shield charm, and then threw out a few Stunners of her own.

"Halt!" The queenly Narcissa commanded.

The leader of the pursuers was a tall dark-skinned man named Kingsley Shacklebolt. He had been a few years above Narcissa when she was in school, and was a man of few words. He was hailed by one of Narcissa's trusted mentors as a gifted mage and praised as a talented Auror. He and the boy on the Firebolt appeared deep in disagreement with one another; the boy had given the order to attack while Shacklebolt had preferred approach with caution. As it was, he had a feeling that the _Evening Prophet_ would be featuring a headline along the lines of "Auror Squad Pre-emptively Attacks Defenceless Black Scions!" To be quite fair, the sisters had been famous for their magical prodigy, and two of the three had Death Eater ties.

The boy with the Firebolt was yelling, clearly uninterested in behaving like a civil human. "Bellatrix Lestrange, you are a murderer! Seize her!" He pointed at the youngest Black sister.

Two of the remaining Aurors had already grabbed the unarmed Bellatrix.

Narcissa addressed the angry boy coolly, "Her name is Bellatrix Black, and there is no need to be so rough. We were doing nothing illegal, Potter." She eyed his broom. "Dianthe gave you back the things you dropped, did she?"

Potter ignored her, but paused for breath. Instead, one of his companions, another young man, held a wand to Bellatrix's throat and yelled "She threw something into the water, one of you, retrieve it!"

A young woman in her twenties made to go into the water, but Kingsley stopped her. He personally waded into the ocean and his eyes followed the little bottle with the piece of cork. It was hard to see in the quickly disappearing light, but it was unmistakably there. "_Accio_!" He pointed his wand at the bottle, but it did not come to him. Frowning, he waded deeper and retrieved it manually.

"No!" Bellatrix cried out for the first time, clearly distressed. "Put it back! Put it _back_!"

Kingsley seemed to give her a sympathetic glance, but he uncorked the bottle anyway. He unrolled the small parchment inside and his eyes widened. Silently, he handed the parchment to the two young men who were so personally motivated to capture Bellatrix Black over her protests.

The one who had given the order to retrieve the bottle read the parchment and was puzzled by the words.

"Give it here, Neville." It was a strong command, but Potter's voice was notably kinder.

The message evidently frustrated Potter as well, because the next second he was yanking Bellatrix's head around by her hair. Andromeda hissed her displeasure. "What does this mean?" He waved the parchment in her face.

"Put it back," she begged meekly. "If you don't let it be carried away by the ocean, my wish won't be granted." A single tear drop fell onto the parchment, which read in painstakingly neat letters, "_If I could be reborn, I would still, now and forever, want to love and be loved by Sirius._" More threatened to follow, making trails down her alabaster face.

"In this town, there is a legend," Andromeda said quietly. "In this small harbour town with a church by the sea, there is this legend. If you have a wish, then write it down on a slip of parchment and put it in a small glass bottle. If it gets carried away beyond the horizon, your wish will surely come true." She reached into her own pocket and revealed that she too had come to give a wish to the ocean. It was not sealed and she handed her parchment to Harry Potter, as she recited, "_I want a do-over. I was so petty, resenting Cissa for being prettier even though she only ever looked out for us. Please give me the chance to appreciate everything Cissa did and give her the thanks she deserves._"

Narcissa looked on the verge of tears too; her usual frosty mask had become too difficult to maintain. "Sirius told Bel about this legend a lifetime ago. We had to come here. We had to try." It was pitiful to see the ever-composed princess fall to pieces.

"Do you – do you have a wish too?" Harry tried to sound imposing, but it was difficult to maintain his composure. He blamed the brine. The truth was, two years ago Narcissa had given him a look into their lives – into her life, into her sisters' lives, into his godfather's life. He had hated seeing Bellatrix when she had been a child; that murderess should not have been innocent or happy ever. But even worse was seeing her shortly before her marriage; Sirius's aunt and uncle were undeniable monsters. He'd even seen, through a house-elf's memory, Bellatrix's first magic – when she was four, she'd cast a Memory Charm on herself in reaction to the trauma of witnessing her mother beat her sister. Harry had needed the purple end of a Puking Pastille in order to stop vomiting after Narcissa slipped off the bodice of her dress to show him all those scars that never faded, and he'd cried when Narcissa told him of how her husband Lucius raged against her mother but never found her less beautiful.

"I have not written one." But as she said that, a roll of parchment flattened itself in front of her; a quill and an inkwell appeared too. She began to write gingerly.

Harry thought Narcissa looked more exhausted than ever, always having looked after her younger cousins and sisters. The most recent war, in which Narcissa was helplessly forced to sit on the sidelines as her husband fell out of the Dark Lord's favour and her only son was sent on dangerous missions as punishment, must have added to her burdens. He gestured to Neville to lower the wand pointed at Bellatrix's throat; she may not have been a victim of this war, but Harry vowed to change magical society so that there would not be anyone who lived the lives of the Black sisters in the next generation.

Bellatrix began humming. Neville gave a start, but nothing else happened. She just hoarsely hummed the lullaby that Harry had heard in Malfoy Manor, the same lullaby that Sirius had taught – he didn't claim credit for writing it, but he'd never disclosed the name of the composer either.

"Would you like to read it before I bottle it?" Narcissa held the parchment out to Harry, though her gaze was to the distant horizon; there was almost no natural light now.

Harry gestured to Neville to follow as they approached a nearby lamppost for ease of reading. Narcissa appeared to have just written whatever thoughts came to mind; it was near incoherent.

_I'm selfish, so I'm going to make a selfish wish. I'd like to go back and smile innocently again. When I do, something will incapacitate Mother before she ever hits me. Father will never lay a hand on Andie. Regulus and Dianthe will continue to be that odd couple, discussing things that I can vaguely understand and leave others in the dust. When James and Lily ask me to be their son's godmother, it will be okay for me to accept because Siri and Bel will be able to have their happily ever after. If James and Siri try to make trouble, I will rein them in instead of letting them loose. I wouldn't change a moment of my marriage to Lucius; Abraxas loved me as if I were his own, and I could feel Solenne smiling down upon us at our wedding. I want it all; I never wanted any of my friends to hurt. And I hope that even if I lead a life with none of the pain, that I will still have the good sense to give my son the same validation I never got._

The teenage boys looked at each other. Harry was somewhat able to follow Narcissa's wish, as he had seen many of her horrific memories. Neville, though perceptive, was lost; he had no context for the basis of Cissa's many wishes.

Harry handed the parchment back to her and she rolled it up and stuffed it in a slightly larger bottle than her sisters had used.

Kingsley gave his Aurors a nod and they replaced Andromeda's and Bellatrix's wishes and returned the bottles to the owners. In his slow, deep voice, he said, "Please send your wishes to the sea. Afterward, you _will_ need to come with us for questioning."

In unison, the three sisters flung their bottles as hard as they could. Narcissa was best; Harry suspected it was because of the many years she'd played as a Beater for the Slytherin Quidditch Team. As eight Aurors stirred from being petrified or stunned, the three women, Harry, Neville, Kingsley, and the three remaining conscious Aurors watched as the will o' wisps following the bottles became nothing more than specks in the darkness.

Under the light of the first quarter moon, the lampposts, and a few remaining will o' wisps, all three sisters surrendered their wands and any equipment that could be potentially used as a weapon. They allowed themselves to be led away from this nostalgic harbour, guarded closely by Aurors. Kingsley Shacklebolt left Harry and Neville the task of sweeping the area for Muggles who may need Memory modification.

"Do you think it's true?" Neville suddenly asked Harry.

"What?"

"That a wish made here can really come true."

Harry paused. He knew exactly why Neville was asking; his parents were tortured by Bellatrix and several of her Death Eater colleagues. It was insinuated that Bellatrix had failed to control her own magic, causing the curse to overload and the Longbottom's to go insane. He didn't want Neville to be filled with false hope; he suspected the Black sisters were grasping at any possibility for deliverance. "It can't hurt, Neville."

"Do you mind?"

"Nah. Take your time." Harry stared out indiscriminately towards the horizon, where the sky appeared to touch the sea. Perhaps there was some merit to Sirius's legend. It made more sense than the notion of making a wish upon a candle on a birthday cake, anyway. _It would have been much simpler if they had done that; we wouldn't have had to chase them all over the country_. Harry thought grimly.

It was chilly, but the air was still at night. Though deafening, the waves' rhythmic song was comforting and soothing – Narcissa was right: the Slytherin's definitely got the best dormitories. Farther away from the crescent moon, the stars had begun to come out to play. Neither Sirius nor Bellatrix could be seen at this time; Harry was grateful, because otherwise it would have been as if the ancestors of the House of Black had been mocking them – all of them. He did his best to ignore other stars and constellations, and his thoughts became of peace and acceptance. _I know you loved her. You wanted us to let her send her wish, didn't you? This I swear, one way or another, I will save her._

The bells of the church rang out eight times.

_FIN_


End file.
